Rafael Díaz Albertini

"His cradle was rocked to the melodies of Gottschalk's piano and White's violin", as both artists frequented his house and made music there.

Rafael Díaz Albertini (Havana, 1857 – Marseille, France, 1928) was highly recognized during his lifetime. "He is the Rafael of music (…) He will become the first among the first of his era", thus expressed Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who had a gracious reputation among Cubans.

For his part, the famous composer Camille Saint Saëns affirmed: "Díaz Albertini has fully entered the ranks of first-magnitude stars, and the reputation he currently enjoys has come to him without effort and naturally. I have found in him an admirable interpreter of my works and thus is explained my affection and preference for him".

But undoubtedly, for Cubans the most gratifying recognition of this great musician was pronounced on April 27, 1879, when the Liceo de Guanabacoa paid him a well-deserved tribute. And it fell to our José Martí to deliver the eulogy of the artist with the "magical violin", as he called it, who was barely 22 years old and had returned after completing his studies in Paris to Havana, where he gave several successful concerts.

"I had heard," says Martí, exalted upon listening to his music, "that timid young man, with a broad forehead because foreheads destined to wear crowns are always broad, I had heard him on intimate nights that I recall with pleasure, making the music glide like the echo of a kiss" […] "There is a splendid language, that vibrates in the strings of melody and speaks through the movements of the heart; it is like a promise of happiness, like a shimmering certainty, like a pledge of clarity and virtue. Color has limits: speech, lips; music: sky, the true is that which does not end; and music is perpetually throbbing in space…"

Unfortunately, only some notes of this oratorical piece are treasured; but it is known that after praising the distinguished violinist, not intimidated by the presence among the audience of Ramón Blanco, captain general of the Island, Martí delivered a patriotic speech, with phrases such as this one: "Sons work for their mother. All men must work for their Homeland", which did not please the ruler at all, who exclaimed in amazement: "I want to not remember what I have heard and never conceived would be said before me, representative of the Spanish Government: I am going to think that Martí is a madman… but a dangerous madman".

Díaz Albertini had his first teachers in Havana: Anselmo López and José Van der Gutch, a Belgian settled in the city. At 11 years old he gave his first concert in the Edelmann hall and later, in the U.S., he performed one of Joseph Haydn's quartets, accompanied—as it is said—by Richard Hoffman, Posnianki and Alard, cellist. Upon returning to the Cuban capital he continued his studies.

In 1870 he traveled to Paris, where in its conservatory he won the first prize in violin five years later. Incidentally, it was the also Cuban José White who introduced him to Delphin Alard, violinist and professor of that conservatory. His career as a concert violinist was very intense in Europe and America.

One of his biographers recounts that: "On May 11, 1886, a soirée in honor of Liszt took place at the home of his countryman and friend, the celebrated Hungarian painter Munkaczy. (…) Albertini, accompanied by Saint Saëns and cellist Buger, performed that glorious and memorable night for him the violin part of the symphonic poem Orpheus, receiving the warmest congratulations from the eminent master".

In 1894 he toured the Island performing in different cities alongside the great pianist Ignacio Cervantes.

But perhaps it is not sufficiently known that Rafael Díaz Albertini, like Ignacio Cervantes, contributed to the independence cause through donations from the proceeds of his concerts.

He formed the trilogy of Cuban violinists of excellence of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, together with the mulatto from Matanzas José White, who died in Paris, and the black Havanan Claudio José Brindis de Salas, who died in Buenos Aires. "Díaz Albertini, to complete the ethnic ajiaco—as Leonardo Depestre says—, was white and died in Marseille, at seventy-one years of age".